What could have been a routine car fire in the parking lot of the Westfield Garden State Plaza on Saturday night turned more serious after shoppers panicked, thinking terrorists had attacked.

Even to police, the vehicle burning in the fire lane outside of Macy’s hinted that perhaps a terrorist attack was under way. And the people pouring into the parking lot from Macy’s reported hearing loud sounds they thought were gunshots.

“Definitely gave us concern until we investigated further,” Paramus Police Chief Kenneth Ehrenberg said Sunday. “Then we found it was just a series of bad luck and coincidences.”

There was no fire bomb and no shooter. And those loud noises were the sound of metal stanchions and displays being knocked over as the customers rushed for the exits, police said.

Although tens of thousands of people go shopping in North Jersey malls every day, in large part because they are safe places, the notion that something horrible can happen in any public setting hangs over people since such violent events as the Oklahoma City bombing, the Columbine school shootings, 9/11, the school shootings in Newtown, Conn., and more recently the killing of a man at the Mall at Short Hills by carjackers and an incident at Garden State Plaza in which a Teaneck man fired several shots before killing himself. In this age of heightened vigilance — “See Something, Say Something” — people interpreted the sounds they heard Saturday as gunfire.

“It was a car fire,” said Paul McCauley, a criminologist at Indiana University of Pennsylvania who also works as a security consultant. “But the perception of a terrible event can yield all kind of strange behaviors.”

When terror, either real or imagined, strikes in any public setting, people are faced with a choice. “We can run, hide or fight,” McCauley said.

Most people ran from the mall on Saturday night, then jumped into cars only to get trapped in gridlock as they tried to exit the parking lot. Others hid inside the mall, sending tweets to loved ones.

“Yo, locked in the storage room in Garden State Plaza,” said one Twitter user named Miriam. “Yo, I’m in shock.” Police SWAT teams commenced a lockdown while ambulances waited outside.

“It was a tremendous police response,” said Tito Jackson, an EMS responder who is also mayor of Bogota. “This is what we train for. It was chaotic, but it was an organized chaos.”

Six months ago, when Richard Shoop of Teaneck walked into the Garden State Plaza with a gun, employees hid behind locked doors. Shoop fired several shots, didn’t hit anyone, then killed himself.

“Fifteen years ago, no one thought about any kind of violence at malls,” said C. Britt Beemer, chairman of America’s Research Group, which conducts weekly surveys of consumers. “Then Sept. 11 happened, and the antenna went up.”

For many, shopping is a form of recreation, and mall operators work hard to maintain a safe and relaxing atmosphere.

Although the stores inside the Garden State Plaza mall were closed on Sunday because of blue laws, people lined up for the movies as if nothing had happened.

“No establishment can guarantee safety 100 percent of the time,” McCauley said. “But I don’t believe in the fortress mentality.”

McCauley suggests that people take basic safety precautions, like being aware of their surroundings at all times and knowing where the nearest exit is. He advocates what he terms a cautious response. “Don’t panic,” he said.